Scrabble & Spoons
by Eriks leadinglady
Summary: It all began with those eight fateful words: Who wants to play a game of Scrabble?


A/N: This is just a funny, little story that I was inspired to write by a certain furry friend named Sir Didymus. At the moment, it is just a oneshot, but depending on the feed-back, I may add more oneshots like this. So, please let me know what you think and please enjoy!

**_Scrabble & Spoons_**

_By: EriksLeadinglady_

It was a tense moment – the entire game rested on this one last move. She needed seven points to win, but there weren't many choices to choose from. On her shelf, she had and A, E, J, R, H, and T. It certainly did not pass her that this spelled out Jareth, but having that just made her angry; she couldn't use any names!

Growling under her breath, Sarah began forming words in her head.

_RAT, JAR, TAR, EAR, HAT, HEAR… And was JAER a word? No, no, that wouldn't work anyways even if it were… Wait a minute… HEART! That's it! Now… where to put it…_

On the board, she saw an available H, but it only had two places following it, that wouldn't do. There was an E in the word TIRE, but three spaces below it was another word – BOG. And that just would never do, for HEARTG was most definitely not a word.

Sarah gave a disgruntled sigh as she realized that there were no good places for her to put HEART. She gave one more look through and… wait a minute! There! In BIRDIE! There was an available R! It was positively perfect! It even intercepted a blue square – her favorite! She just loved the color blue! With a gleeful smile, Sarah placed down her word carefully, and her grin widened when she heard the groans of the other players.

"Ha!" she exclaimed. "I won! Take that with your plastic and smoke it!"

"My lady," started a losing Sir Didymus, "it seems that you have bested us all once again!"

"Oh yes," said a new accented voice from behind them, and everyone turned to look to see who it was. "Your vocabulary skills are quite astounding."

Sarah scoffed, not caring that the Goblin King had just entered her bedroom. "You're just jealous because you didn't get invited to play."

Jareth, however, remained indifferent. "Why in the world would I want to play a silly little word game?" He looked at the board and his eyes widened in amazement. "With marvelously crafted squares of wood, engraved with printed letters!" Jareth exclaimed as he launched himself into the playing circle. "Oh, oh, oh! Sign me up!"

Sarah gave him a pointed look. "What do you say?"

"Now?" wondered Jareth as his eyebrows raised.

She only rolled her eyes as she nodded over to Sir Didymus to give Jareth a shelf.

"Alright, Jareth, you can play. But that's only because if I did otherwise, you would just whine and be a big party pooper."

"I am not a party pooper!" argued Jareth, who had a shocked look on his face. "I bring loads of fun to any party! Right?"

He was met by silence. Jareth sighed as he waved his hand and conjured a crystal. He threw it in the air, and then there was confetti, which, when drawn away, revealed lots of goodies! Everyone cheered in response, and Jareth jeered at Sarah. "See? Now how can you have a party without cock doggies and cheese nips? And how about those sliced peaches? Nothing is ever complete without peaches."

"Oh please," said Sarah. "I could go my whole life without seeing or eating another peach."

Jareth gasped. "Blasphemy!"

Sarah looked at Sir Didymus and avoided the statement. "Can we just play already?"

Just as she was about to reach into the bag and grab her seven pieces, Jareth grabbed her arm. "Wait! You never explained to me how to play!"

Sarah sighed her annoyance. "You get seven squares and with them you form words that you put onto the board on the squares. After the first player goes, you have to latch on each new word onto some letter from the previous word. Then, on each square, there is a number. In your word, after you have placed it, you add up all the letters and those are the points you receive for that turn. Get it?"

"Of course," responded Jareth. "I am not a kindergartener. You treat me like I'm five."

"Oh my goodness! Just shut up and play the fraggin' game! Geez!" yelled Sarah as she slumped her arms over her chest and pouted.

"Well excuse me, Miss Fancy pants," retorted Jareth as he waved his hands. "We'll just play your game in complete silence."

"Good."

"Fine."

"Perfect."

"Great."

"Okay."

"Peachy."

"Just start the game already!" screamed Hoggle, who had had just about enough of these two scally wags. "Now Sarah, it is your turn to start the game. And then it is your turn, Your Majesty."

Just as Sarah was about to put down her word SCAT, she was interrupted by Jareth's voice. "Wait a minute! Why does she get to go before me? I am better than she is and more attractive. Why don't I start it?"

It was Sarah who answered, even though the question was aimed at Hoggle. "Because here on planet earth, we play by the rules and what's fair, not just by what suits you best."

Jareth furrowed his brow. "Well that's no way to do anything! My word is the only word!"

This was the last straw for Sarah, and she rose to her feet and screamed in Jareth's face. "IF YOU'RE NOT GOING TO PLAY BY OUR RULES, THEN YOU CAN JUST LEAVE, YOU POMPOUS JERK! AND NO ONE WOULD MISS YOU BECAUSE WE ALL HATE YOU, YOU LOUSY, NO-GOOD KING OF A PILE OF ROCKS! YOU MAY BE THE HIGH AND MIGHTY KING OF THE UNDERGROUND, BUT HERE YOU ARE NOTHING! A WORTHLESS PILE OF HEAPING POTATOE SACKS AND NOTHING MORE!"

At the end of Sarah's outburst, she looked down at Jareth's face and suddenly felt very guilty for what she had just done. Jareth was giving her the puppy dog eyes as his bottom lip quivered. She lowered her arms in defeat, and then sat back down, facing Jareth, but he turned away.

"I'm sorry, Jareth. I didn't mean it…" she apologized.

Jareth sniffled. "What's said is said. Let's just play your little game."

Sarah sighed as she finally got to place down her word. Then it was Jareth's turn, and he put down the word TERD, which, when added onto SCAT spelled out the word SCATTERD. Jareth was then put into first place, which made his overall mood somewhat better. He would beat this mortal girl, or his name wasn't Jareth.

0o0o0o0o0oo0o0o0o00o

So it turns out that his name is not Jareth. Some turns later, Sarah had gone into first place, and left Jareth behind in third. There was only one turn left, and Jareth held nothing of significance that would beat Sarah – she was a Scrabble beast. She was ahead of second place – which was Ludo, and how that happened no one knows – by thirty points! It was incredible how much the rest of the players sucked.

On Jareth's last turn, he put down the word LOSER, which was fitting, since he lost. And then that was how Sarah won the Scrabble game… just as she had won his Labyrinth… was there nothing that Jareth was better at than Sarah?

Surprisingly, after Sarah won, she was very humble about it and did not throw it back in Jareth's face; but perhaps that was because she still felt bad about earlier.

"Well," she said as she put away her pieces and cleared off the board, "does anyone want to play again?"

No one in the circle spoke up.

Sarah continued on. "Come on, don't be sore losers! If you don't want to play Scrabble, I have Candyland, Shoots & Ladders…"

"Try Crap," added a voice from one of the goblins.

"Oh! I do have Craps!"

The crowd groaned. "We don't want to play with your craps!" They all shouted.

"No!" defended Sarah. "Not like that! It is a card game!" She paused as a light bulb hit her. "Ow!" she screamed as she rubbed her head. "Who just hit me with a light bulb?"

"You did get an idea…" grumbled Jareth.

She glared at him, but then she did remember her fantastic idea. "Spoons!" she screamed. "We'll play spoons!"

"Is that a musical instrument or something?" questioned Hoggle.

Sarah shook her head. "No. It's a card game. You each get four cards and you try to get four of a kind. The dealer passes around the rest of the deck in a circle, and then when a card gets to you that you need, you pick it up and then pull out another card from your pile to pass around. Each player keeps on passing around one card, in order, until one person gets four of a kind. When that happens, that player grabs a spoon from the middle of the circle, or another room, wherever I put the spoons, and then the rest of the group follows suit."

"Even if we don't have four of a kind?"

"Yes, even if you don't. And then whoever doesn't get a spoon is out! You see, since there are seven of us playing, there would only be six spoons, so one person doesn't get a spoon. Then there would be six players, and five spoons, and so on until there are only two players and whoever gets the four of a kind first wins!"

Sir Didymus was the first to reply to the request. "That sounds like a fine idea, my lady!"

Sarah clapped her hands together. "Oh goody! This shall be so much fun!" Then she looked around her room. "Alright, I shall go get some spoons, and then I will place them all in the door way right over there." She pointed to the doorway that led into the supply room, which was down the hall, two doors away. Then she turned back to the party members. "While I am gone, please try to behave." Sarah looked directly at Jareth as she said this.

Jareth threw his hands up. "And of course you think that I will be the one to act up. Its' not like I have to rule these exact same creatures every day of my miserable life or anything. Oh no, of course I will be the one to misbehave, especially since I keep all these miscreants in line, I will definitely be the out to step out of line and mess something up. So please, by all means, expect me to do something out of the ordinary and screw up your prefect little life by putting something in your perfect little room out of its' perfect little place. Yes, I beg you, do so."

By the time Jareth had finished his speech, Sarah had already come back from the kitchen and was sitting back in the circle holding a deck of cards.

Jareth frowned at her. "That was fast."

"No, you just talk a lot."

Then Sarah handed out the cards to each player, and began the game of Spoons. She held two 4's, a three, and a seven in her hand, thus she decided to collect fours. The circle was moving pretty slowly, since it was everyone's first time playing the game. Sarah continued on in her search for 4's, until out of the corner of her eye, she saw a blur of yellow fur. The next thing she knew, she was being pushed over (more like mauled over) by a certain Goblin King. She immediately rose to her feet and caught up with Jareth, tackling him to the ground in the middle of the hallway. She clawed over him, jamming her knee into his chin. But before Sarah could reach any spoons, Jareth vanished from sight, and the next time she saw him, he was standing right in front of the room, holding up a spoon with a gleeful smile on his face. Sarah gave a disgruntled noise as she grabbed the last spoon.

Since their little battle had taken so long, Sarah wondered how she had gotten a spoon at all, and looked around to see who didn't get a spoon. Once back on her feet, Sarah looked back into her room and saw Ludo still sitting there, going through the cards. Shaking her head sadly, she found her way back into the room and sat down in the circle.

"Ludo, you're out of the game," she explained.

"Ludo… lose?" the creature asked.

Sarah nodded her head.

"Ludo… sad…"

She patted his shoulder. "I'm sorry, Ludo, but you're going to have to move out of the circle." Ludo grudgingly agreed and scooted himself away from the game, and was silent for the rest of the evening.

Leaving the room once again, Sarah placed five spoons back in the doorway and then resumed the game.

They had many more rounds, until it came down to the final three players: Sarah, Jareth, and Sir Didymus.

Sarah began the round and passed around the cards at a super-human pace, and surprisingly, the rest of the group were able to all keep up, since they had played many rounds themselves. Sarah held three 6's, and Jareth held three 9's. Just as Sarah got her fourth six, and she was about to grab the spoon, she noticed that Jareth had already fled from the room, leaving her and Sir Didymus still sitting in the circle. How he had disappeared so sneakily was unknown.

Giving a loud curse, Sarah jumped to her feet and raced down the hallway after Jareth. Sir Didymus was the last to leave the circle, but with his super-dog Ambrosious on his side, he easily surpassed Sarah, taking the lead in the race for the last spoon. However, putting in some extra push just as they were reaching the destination, Sarah threw herself at the spoon, making a dive for it. She flew right over Sir Didymus and reached her hand out, hoping against hope to get the spoon first. When she hit the ground with a loud thump, she clenched her eyes shut and didn't dare to open them to see if she had been successful or not. So instead she asked, "Did I get it?"

"Look for yourself," answered Jareth. Since Sarah couldn't tell from the tone of his voice whether or not she had received the spoon to place into the finals, she grudgingly peered out through one eye.

She groaned loudly when she realized that she didn't have the spoon in her hand. She slumped her body in defeat and continued to lay on the ground in agony. However, she did take notice that Sir Didymus was not jumping up for joy either. She raised her head up ever so slightly and looked at her furry friend, then realizing that he did not hold the most-wanted spoon either.

She furrowed her brow as she asked, "Where's the spoon?"

Jareth cleared his throat. "I do believe that you are laying on it."

Sarah frowned as she raised her body from the ground and peeked underneath it. Sure enough, just as Jareth had observed, the spoon was right under her, by her stomach.

"It appears as though your horrible distance calculations have saved your arse, Sarah," noted Jareth.

But she only smiled gaily. "They sure did!"

The next and final round was now between Sarah and Jareth, the two biggest rivals of all time. Sarah stared at Jareth, challenging him to the best game of his life. Jareth return just as harsh of a stare, meeting her challenge. After passing out the correct amount of cards, Sarah picked up the first card of the deck, looked at it, and then passed it on quickly, repeating this for a number of turns. She was collecting 3's, but what she didn't know was that Jareth was also collecting 3's – each of them had two of this number.

At last, when there seemed to be absolutely no more 3's in the deck for Sarah to place within her hands, she decided to collect 8's and passed on one of her 3's. Jareth was ecstatic when he finally saw a three coming his way and snatched it up greedily, then discarded a two.

When Sarah had gotten three 8's, she finally passed on her last three, and this move was much to Jareth's pleasure, for he then had all four 3's and he immediately rose from his seat, charging for the bathroom, where Sarah had decided to place the last spoon for the final round.

Sarah saw Jareth rise from his seat and take off down the hall and she was right behind him in an instant. To her dismay, however, Jareth was an extremely fast runner, and at first it was difficult to catch him. But she did manage to get close enough to him in order to grab his hair and yank it with all her might. He gave a yelp of pain and paused for just a moment to fix his perfect do. Then he continued onwards in the race and caught up to where he was only mere inches behind Sarah.

The bathroom was coming up quickly, being the next door on the right. Sarah turned sharply, hoping to make it in uneventfully. But Jareth had other plans and rammed her into the corner of the bathroom door, making Sarah knock her elbow painfully. She cringed, but only for a moment and then she tackled Jareth to the ground, making him hit his jaw on the toilet seat. The spoon was located in the tub, a rather strategic place for it to be placed.

Having Jareth down the ground, Sarah lunged at the tub, but fell short since she was dragged down by Jareth's hand. Jareth continued to drag her and presumed to climb over her body in order to reach the tub. When Jareth was on her back, Sarah kicked him off, like a bull, but Jareth just landed on her legs, so she was still unable to move properly. So she stretched her body as much as she could, clawing for the spoon that was still out of her reach.

However, her arms were not long enough and stretch and stretch as she might, she still could not gain hold of the precious spoon. She cried out in agony as she felt Jareth crawl over her like a bridge, and she watched in horror as he made it to the tub. Her eyes widened in sheer terror and disgust as his hand reached inside the tub, moving many slow inches towards the white utensil, until finally, to end the entire game, Jareth retrieved the spoon.

At the top of her lungs, Sarah screamed, "Nnnnnnnoooooooooooooooooo!" and slumped down in defeat as Jareth began to rejoice in his own way. He jumped up and down (which, to Sarah's dismay, was on her back) as he thrust his hand – holding the spoon – into the air in a gesture of triumphant victory. Sarah on the other hand had begun weeping, from the pain of having a full-grown man jumping on her back or from the hurt of losing, is not certain.

But what is certain, to all that saw the spectacle of wits, was that the Goblin King had, at last, bested the mortal homo-sapien known as Sarah Williams.

_Like it? Didn't like it? Please bless me with your thoughts! Love, E. Ll_


End file.
